GOP offers own Hurricane Sandy relief package

Senate Republicans outlined a scaled-back $23.8 billion Hurricane Sandy disaster aid package Wednesday, but it was met with a cool reception from Northeast Democrats and triggered a fight that could turn — who’d have guessed? — on fish and milk.

The GOP proposal is little more than a third of the $60.4 billion request first made by President Barack Obama, and rather than accept the reduction, the New York and New Jersey delegations appear willing to risk defeat and fight anew next year.

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Obama announces federal relief

It’s a gamble that rests on peeling off enough Republicans to get to the 60-vote supermajority in a showdown cloture vote, now expected Friday. And the fish angle comes from a $150 million provision to assist distressed fisheries not just in the Northeast but Alaska and Mississippi, home to salmon, oysters, crabs and Republicans.

Indeed, five Senate Republicans have signed up in support of the funding, which would be stripped out under the GOP alternative and was the subject of angry debate on the floor Wednesday. Together with concessions for Louisiana and North Dakota, Democrats led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer see the makings of a coalition.

The entire debate has been thrown into confusion by last week’s tragic Newtown elementary school massacre, followed by the sudden death of Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) on Monday. But if Schumer can get anything out of the Senate, it will put the onus back on Republicans and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to deliver in the GOP-controlled House.

But his fellow chairman, Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), already has his eyes on the Sandy aid as a way to move a farm bill extension and avert a spike in milk prices.

“I believe that Congress will work to address the suffering of our friends on the East Coast,” Lucas told reporters. “We’re a compassionate body. Those folks suffered tens of billions of dollars in destruction.”

“He’s looking at all trains,” laughed Rogers in response. “ I hear him.”

Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) took the lead in crafting the Senate GOP alternative and said he was encouraged by discussions with his colleagues at a Republican luncheon meeting.

Coats said he had weeded out anything in the president’s request that was not directly related to the hurricane. And almost $13 billion to pay for mitigation efforts to protect against future disasters would also be dropped. That represents a significant reduction in the transit funding, for example, and Coats signaled that he would also scale back an estimated $15 billion for Community Block Grants to assist in the immediate recovery.

He said his goal is to assure enough resources to carry programs through March and allow time for a more complete assessment.

“It gives us three months to collect the right documents, facts [and] so forth regarding future needs … give agencies time to sharpen their numbers,” Coats told POLITICO.

I am so proud of our fellow countrymen - they were so ready to spend 3 trillion on two exhibition wars on foreign soil, mortgaged our future in the process, and then refuse to send adequate disaster relief to their own fellow citizens.

I'm getting SICK AND TIRED of bills and packages being held up by pet projects tacked on!!! Everyone should demand that a bill be about whatever the title states, and nothing more. Obama tacked on millions of dollars to this package that had absolutely NOTHING to do with Sandy relief, and the people of NY and NJ should be mighty upset that he's purposefully using our tragedy to once again give liberal media a GOP-bulls eye headline! Sandy Relief aid should be about *duh!* SANDY RELIEF...PERIOD!! Thank you, GOP for making sure of that!

I think people should take a serious look at that $60 billion bill. Half of it is pork - ever hear of "ear marks"? Helping coastal NJ, NY and southwestern CT is OK, but most of the damage is within a few blocks of the shore. Inland there was minor local flooding, a few tree limbs and the inconvenience of power disruption.

But, what do fisheries in Alaska and dune work on KSC have to do with the northeast?

Water filled three major tunnels that are used by cars everyday to conduct commerce between New York and New Jersey and Manhattan and Queens. Subway system tunnels were submerged extending in all directions and along all subway lines that connect in the southern part of Manhattan. Train switches that were damaged while submerged are still failing because the system is being held together by duct tape and rubber bands. A major over land subway line that joins the Rockaway Peninsula, Broad Channel, and Howard Beach was completely washed out by the tidal surge. Skyscrapers in lower Manhattan are still not operational because the waste deep water that filled lobbies filled the four stories of infrastructure below the lobbies. The Sandy superstorm was not an event that damaged some summer or vacation homes along the shore.

Dreamymiss, I agree with you completely--too much of that money is not targeted to those who NEED it. However, I don't share your optimism that the Repubs will do the responsible thing and limit the funding to them. They start tossing out their values half-way through a disagreement with Dems, then, completely cave on the bigger aspects of an issue at the end. The Dems, media, and unions, on the other hand, ask for the universe, 'settle' for the world, and tell the citizens that they have bent over backwards to compromise. Very few people bother to find out what is really going on, so, they believe the loudmouths. We are an uninformed, easily-led society, and we have only ourselves to blame when we crash.

I guess Obama thinks that "Sandy"adversely affected the barbeque industry because he certainly is attempting to replenish the pork supply in response. "Hell of a Job,Brownie",Let's keep giving all those military assault vehicles,M-4 rifles and millions of rounds of 40 cal.ammo to FEMA.Those people on Staten Island can REALLY use them.